And to hear the 58-year-old award-winning writer on the set of Season 2 of the television adaptation of his 2001 bestseller, there’s no better place to be filming this new incarnation.

“It feels very appropriate that we’re making American Gods here,” Gaiman says at an east-end studio. “Toronto was the first place where I had a mega signing. It was the first place I was recognized on the street. It was the first place I had An Evening with Neil Gaiman event.”

He pauses, then continues: “I remember coming here in 1991 and there was a line of people around the block at Silver Snail.

“I had dinner plans for 9 p.m. and I got back to the hotel at 1 a.m. I missed dinner and I was having chocolate chip cookies in the bath and thinking, ‘This is the glamorous life.’”

I remind him that when we last spoke, a rain-soaked fan interrupted us mid-interview to get his dog-eared copy of American Gods signed.

“I remember that!” Gaiman exclaims.

Along with his DC comic The Sandman, the children’s fable Coraline and the fantastical Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett and also soon to be a series), American Gods is one of Gaiman’s most well-known works. His sprawling fantasy novel pitted ancient deities against modern gods ruling over technology and pop culture. Smack dab in the middle of these warring gods is an ex-con Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), his dead wife (Emily Browning) and the mysterious Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane).

The long-awaited second season of the series debuts Monday on Amazon Prime Video in Canada with an ensemble cast that includes Pablo Schreiber (Mad Sweeney), Crispin Glover (Mr. World) and Betide Badaki (Bilquis).

“The fun of making it a TV series is you give people the things they’re looking forward to, but you also give them things they had no idea they were looking forward to,” executive producer Gaiman says.

During a whirlwind trip to the set last summer, Gaiman spoke about being the cool kid on the block and weighed in on the chances we’ll ever see a Sandman movie.

Why was now the right time for American Gods?

Sometimes, as a writer, you get to be a little bit ahead of your time. When I wrote Sandman, it wasn’t exactly ahead of its time but the vast audience had no idea what to make of it. Then there was a smaller audience of people that said, ‘This is cool and important and it’s saying something.’ I think American Gods the TV show was very similar. … When Season 1 was broadcast, suddenly we found that we were saying something that was very huge and very relevant about race, about immigration and about America. Suddenly, we were making political statements.

Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday in a scene from American Gods.

What’s in store for fans this season?

Season 1 took us from the beginning of the book to just before the House on the Rock. Season 2, in general terms, takes us from the House on the Rock through to Shadow leaving Cairo, Ill. But what happens on the way includes things that weren’t in the book. In the novel, you’re following Shadow around and seeing the world from his point of view. In the TV series, you’re looking at the whole. So you’re following Shadow, but the other characters as well.

Ricky Whittle as Shadow Moon in a scene from American Gods Season 2.

It wasn’t smooth sailing from Season 1 to Season 2. Original showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green exited, and Jesse Alexander (who has since departed) took over. What was the story there?

One of the things that was interesting about Bryan and Michael is they wrote great scripts, but they weren’t very good at running a writers’ room. Jesse understands delegating.

What’s it like to be the cool guy nowadays? You went from being this niche fantasy writer to one of the most mainstream names in pop culture.

It’s very weird because I got to do it without ever changing what I do. For 25 years, people have been saying to me, ‘Why don’t you just pick one thing and stick with it?’ My answer always is, ‘I like telling different stories.’

Has it surprised you to see that mass acceptance?

Not really. It was so slow and gradual. You talked to me 10 years ago, and I had just won the Carnegie Medal and the Newbery Medal. So there was a culture shift even then. But through most of my life, it’s either been: ‘Neil Gaiman? Never heard of him.’ Or Neil Gaiman? He’s my favourite author.’ Not a lot else.

So what about The Sandman. It’s your most popular work in comic books. There was talk of Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing it as a movie, then that was kaput. Will we ever see the Lord of Dreams on the big screen?

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on a Sandman TV series. The odds that one day a Sandman thing will happen are huge. The fact that Lucifer, which is the tiniest thing in the Sandman universe, was spun off and has become an incredibly popular TV series means that it’s not a risk. As far as DC comics has been concerned, for years its crown jewels have been Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and Sandman, but they’ve never known what to do with Sandman.